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OH, 



THE AVILDER^S^ESS KEJOICIXG, 



A 



THANKSGIYIAG SERMON 



tiRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 



JSToveiiabev ^3, 1878. 



J^Y (fEORGE ]:)rFFIELJ). 



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TwVXSlXG. ]\[I(II.; 
<. GKOUGK & CO., PRIXTRUS AM) BINDKUS. 1>^ 

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THE NEW CAPITOL; 



OR, 



THE WILDERNESS EEJOICmG. 



A 



THANKSGIVING SERMON 



FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, 



Noveinber S8, 187S. 



By GEORGE DUFFIELD. 



(PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.) 



LANSING, MICH.: 
Vr. S. GEORGE & CO., PRINTERS AND BINDERS. 

1S7S. 



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SteT CAPITOLIUM rUI;GENS. 



Hor. 



Lansing, Dec. 2, 1878. 
Rev. George Diiffield, D. D. : 

Dear Sir: — The undersigned having hstened to your sermon on 
Thanksgiving day, with great pleasure, hereby respectfuUy request 
a copy of the same for pubhcation. 

Commemorating not only the day so long celebrated by this great 
nation, but filled with facts and historical allusions, of great mterest 
to the citizens of Lansing, we are anxious that it should be preserved 
by such publication. The history of Lansing, from its selection as 
the seat of government of the State in 1847, must always be of 
great interest, not alone to its old citizens, but to all who hereafter 
become permanent residents. Its history and progress is a minia- 
ture of the progress of the Peninsular State for the last thirty years. 
Very respectfully, 



S. D. Bingham, 


H. W. WAI.KER, 


H. M. Joy, 


S. Reeves, 


Theodore P. Pkudden, 


L. B. Potter, 


H. Crawford, 


S. M. Miller, 


Henry N. Lawrence, 


C. H. Thompson. 


N. F. Handy, 


H. Ingeesoll, 


0. A. Bowen, 


George E. Kanney. 



Lansing, Mich., Dec. 10, 1875. 
Hon. 8. D. Bingham, Rev. T. P. Prudden, Hon. 0. A. Bowen and 
others : 

Gentlemen: — Called unexpectedly to preach the Thanksgiving 
sermon with only a week in which to prepare it, and that too when 
the State Library was in transitu and unavailable, if I have written 
anything worthy of publication, it is more than I expected. Your 
vote in the church at the union service was khid. Your letter stiU 
more so, and I cannot refuse your request. With all its deficien- 
cies, the hasty manuscript is at your service. That there may one 
day be a "Young Eeptjblic " in this country who shall thoroughly 
understand and appreciate its true history, is the sincere prayer of 
Yours with respect and esteem, 

George Duffield, 
Pastor First Pres. Church. 



BURTON H!^^ ^^iltCTlON 
C 

EXv. •„ L IMPLICATE 



THE NEW CAPITOL; 



OR, 



THE WILDERNESS REJOICING. 



ISAIAH XXXV., 1, 2. 

"The "wilderness and the soUtaiy place shall be glad, and the 
desert shaU rejoice and blossom as the I'ose. 

"It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and sing- 
ing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it; the excellency of 
Carmel and Sharon; they shaXiL see the globy of the Loed, 

AND the excellency OF OUE GOD." 

It is indeed an occasion of "Thanksgiving and praise 
to Almighty God," when such a wonderful change is wit- 
nessed in the condition of any people as is here described. 

A fertile and populous country turned into a wilder- 
ness (as in the border States during the last war), briars 
and thorns coming up in the fortress, thorns and nettles 
in the palaces, and the fox looking out of the window, is 
much too frequent an incident in human history to create 
surprise. Fire, and sword, and famine, and pestilence 
have done this work of desolation a thousand times. 

But such a calamitous history directly reversed ! the wil- 
derness becoming a fruitful field, and instead of the thorn 
the fir tree, instead of the briar the myrtle tree ; the desert 
converted into a garden, and made to bud and blossom 
as the rose ; the solitary place rejoicing over the multi- 
tude of its inhabitants with joy and singing, is a marvel 
indeed. It is an incident so very rare that even "rapt 
Isaiah" himself, with all his hallowed fire, can find no 
better figure by which to represent that day so long ex- 



6 

pected (but which yet will come) when "the way of holiness 
shall be established in the earth, when joy and gladness 
shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of 
melody." Then, when the good Providence of God " Caus- 
eth it to rain on the earth where no man is, on the wilder- 
ness wherein there is no man, to satisfy the desolate and 
waste ground, and to cause the bud of the tender herb 
to spring forth." — Job xxxviii., 26-7. Then, when the 
glory of Lebanon is given to them, and the excellency of 
Carmel and Sharon, no wonder that such highly favored 
localities are also made to recognize "the glory of the 
Lord, and the excellency of our God." 

Trusting that you will pardon my temerity in under- 
taking so vast a theme at so short a notice, I invite 
your attention to " The Wilderness Eejoicing," or some 
thoughts on the completion of the New Capitol. 

Inquire of the former age, and search diligently of the 
fathers, and they will teach you, that great as has been our 
increase in the latter end, it was "a day of small things" 
at the beginning. The aspiring heads of future things 
were not yet visible. 

" The inhabitants being of different nations, different 
Teligions, different languages, it is almost impossible to 
;give them any precise and determinate character. These 
several communities must always be helpless and depen- 
dent ; formed for happiness, perhaps, hut not formed for 
'Cmp'ire or union.'" So writes Parson Burnaby in his book 
of travels, A. D. 1759. 

"From the universal loyalty of the people, it is absurd 
to imagine they have any thoughts of independence. No 
more absurd would it be to place two of his majesty's 
beef eaters to watch a child in the cradle, that it do not 
rise and cut its father's throat, than to guard these in- 
fant colonies to prevent the shaking off the British yoke. 
Besides, they are so distinct from one another in their 
forms of government, in their religious rites, in their 
emulation of trade, and consequently in their affections, 



that they never can miite in so dangerous an enterprize." 
So said the notorious Hutchinson in his official commu- 
nication to the home government thii'ty years before. — 
Vol. II., 118. So said they all, if not in the same words 
as Tobiah, the Ammonite, of the feeble Jews attempting 
to revive the stones of the Temple from the heaps of rub- 
bish that had been burned, at least to the same effect, 
"Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall 
break down their stone wall." 

But the hand of Providence was not reserving this va- 
cant spot, on the Great Western Continent, and especially 
the great peninsula in the very heart of it, for the last 
grand experiment of human government in vain. Not in 
vain was he sifting the three kingdoms for the seed wheat 
wherewith to sow the virgin soil of His choicest field. 
No century has ever passed over the earth that has wit- 
nessed such a glorious harvest, such vast material progress, 
such wonderful intellectual and moral progress, such rapid 
political advancement, and such true national prosperity 
as that which came to its close July 4, 1876. We did 
well to celebrate it, not only in justice to ourselves, but 
for the good of the world. The reproach of the enemies 
of free institutions has returned upon their own heads, 
and been rendered seven fold into their own bosom. 

Similar to that of the Nation has been the history of 
our State. Those who first entered our borders through 
"the Black Swamp," or blazed their way into the "heavy 
timber," or axe in hand fought their way through our 
choked and winding streams in their " dug-outs," seemed 
to think that it was all swamj) and marsh and bottoms 
that never could be drained. The first report that went 
to headquarters from Saginaw Valley certified that "only 
mosquitoes, bull-frogs, or Indians could live there," and 
yet where will you find a busier or more populous valley, 
or one whose wealth has been more rapidly multiplied? 

When the corner stone of the new Capitol was laid, 
that vast concourse of 50,000 citizens were pleasantly 



8 

reminded by the orator of the day, that two millions of 
acres once set apart in her Territory for the soldiers of 
1812 would not be accepted, even as a gift, and the act 
of Congress was repealed ! 

"Nearly one-half the country a poor, barren, sandy 
land, in which scarcely any thing can grow but scrub oak ; 
little short sand hills, forming deep basins of marsh, the 
shores and bottoms of the streams swampy beyond de- 
scription, the extreme sterility and barrenness of the soil, 
— everywhere the same, — taking the country as a whole, 
not one acre out of a hundred, if indeed one out of a 
thousand, that would in any case admit of cultivation !" 
Such was the description given of our pleasant peninsula 
by the Surveyor General of Ohio Nov. 13, 1815. Such, 
substantially, the adverse opinion and prophecy for nearly 
twenty years later of many others, not excepting Horace 
Greeley himself m the New York Tribune. 

But nothing like the light of truth to dissipate the 
darkness of prejudice ! When the time came for the old 
thirteen to be doubled by the admission of Michigan into 
the Union, public opinion had undergone a most decided 
change. There was a social and almost thanksgiving tone 
in the editorials and poems of that period, especially 
Mrs. Sigourneys. "Little Michy" was "a very good lit- 
tle sister," " a very fair little sister." She had " a dow- 
ry" amply sufficient "to spread a broad board," as she 
does to-day. Withal she was considered "quite intelli- 
gent," and the older sisters thought possibly, 

"They could teach her the names, of those great ones to tell 
Who stood at the helm, when the war tempest feU." 

That immortal Koll of Honor in the late Kebellion^ 
will show that she was an apt scholar, and learned her 
lesson well ! Above all, her admission to the Union 
would offset the admission of Arkansas, and the growing 
preponderance of the slave-holding South, and they thought 

I Commissioned officers, 357; enlisted men, 14,466. Total enlisted from 1861-65, 
90,747. 



9 

rightly. Let the Slave State this day compare histories, 
other things being equal, with the Free State, if she dare ! 
Let her show a similar destiny wrought out with the same 
rapidity, and to the same extent of greatness, if she can ! 
Think of the contrast for a single moment, and then see that 
the sooner a " solid South " is made to know her place, the 
better ! The highest compliment I ever heard paid to Mich- 
igan during the war was by a dying soldier from Massachu- 
setts: "Some States," said he, "are good in one thing, 
and some in another, but Michigan is equally good in in- 
fantry, cavalry, artillery, and the corps of engineers." 
Keady as she was to put down Southern Eebellion, she is 
equally ready with another hundred thousand, the sons and 
grand-sons of our martyrs for liberty, to overwhelm South- 
ern tyranny, violence, and fraud. She has not ratified the 
15th amendment in vain. Let the South take timely 
warning. If there is no gratitude left among these men, 
at least they should have some sense ! ^ 

The admission of Michigan to the Union, A. D. 1835, 
was the culminating point of all her previous history. 
Her forms of government had been so manifold, that it is 
her one especial characteristic. Over the primeval period 
of the mound and garden builders, darkness still rests, 
and her history is not yet unveiled ! The hunting grounds 
of the aboriginal Algonquins are almost equally silent. 
People and land make the j^ossihllity of a State, but are 
not the State itself. Forty years (1722-1763) she was a 
distant dependency of France; thirty years (1763-1796) 
a similar dependency of Great Britain ; but a dependency 
is not a State, one of whose essential attributes is Inde- 
pendence. 

Four years (1796-1800) she was an integral portion of 
the Northwestern Territory ; five years (1800-1805) a por- 
tion of the territory of Indiana. But a portion of territory 
is not a State. A State must have Sovereignty, i. e., 
the uncontrolled and exclusive exercise of its own power. 

1 Jan. 4th, 1861, the writer uttered a similar warniiifr,— "That the South may- 
know precisely what they may expect, I repeat the sentiment, that if they 
throw flown the gauntlet and appeal to the God of Battles, it will be taken 
UP."— Fast Day sermon, Philadelphia, 1861, p. 43. 



10 

Thirty years (1805-1835) she was the "Territory of 
Michigan ;" but a territory is not a State. A State must 
have the same rights that other States exercise. It must 
have Equality. It is not a mere aggregation of the in- 
dividuals who represent it, any more than a man is 
merely the sum of the particles that compose his body. 
There is a spirit which is the man, and it is this same 
spirit, in a broader sense, which is the State. 

To ascend these three great altar stairs has been often 
attempted in the history of the world at the cost of infi- 
nite blood and treasure, but seldom has it been accom- 
plished. 

Waiving all philosophic definitions, and all those 
schemes of ideal commonwealths, that like the stars, as 
Bacon has it, "are so high and far away that they 
give but little light and less heat," let us take things in 
the concrete. More than the natural outgrowth of a 
family, more than a mere civil or social compact, more 
than a mere " contrivance of human wisdom for the pro- 
tection of human rights," (Bui-ke,) more than a mere 
process; a State is the result of a process. It is the 
product of hlstorij, and all that it is, and all that it has, 
is within the pale of history. It is a tree that has a 
great historic root. It is a ship, the keel of which has 
been laid by Divine Providence. It is a magnificent edi- 
fice, founded not on force, but on Justice.^ It is planned 
by wisdom ; built by industry ; adorned by taste ; cheered 
by love ; defended by courage ; made permanent by reli- 
gion; and politically there is no more uni)ardonable sin° 
than that of those wdio would lift an accursed hand to 
destroy it. Charles I. deserved to lose his head for his 
crime against the life of a- nation, and that famous apple 
tree was defrauded of its just rights when the leaders of 
rebellion went free, to find themselves in Congress, where 
they are this day lording it over us ! 

The State is, in fact, according to President Woolsey, 

1" First ethics tlien politics," says Plato. 

2 "There can be no fouler deed."— Bancroft, II., p. 15. 



11 

"a moral person." It has a heart; it has a conscience; 
it has a high regard for truth, and virtue, and honor. It 
is not only capable of rights, but of obligations. Its 
province is not confined to justice. It can also exercise 
mercy and benevolence, and can show — 

What Kome ne'er boasted in her proudest day, 
Asylums sacred to humanity, 
For all who need. 

Taken all in all, there is nothing in this world so 
magnificently attractive and beautiful, so dear to the pres- 
ent, so sure a pledge for the future, as a State that, like 
a blooming virgin, has just come to her full maturity.^ 
There is nothing whose death is so terrible, or so much 
to be lamented, as that of a commonwealth. And it is 
not so surprising, as Prudhon w^ould have us think, that 
as soon as one goes deep into politics he stumbles on 
religion, when even Benj. Constant, who projected his 
work in the spirit of atheism, finished it by seeking the 
necessary condition of the existence of civilized society 
in the sentiment of religion ! 

Keligion is the cement that holds society together. 
Miss the church steeple from the landscape, and with it 
all the Christianity that has come from our ancestors, 
and you will have no common school. Lose your com- 
mon school and your Capitol will be but a heap of stone 
and mortar. "Vice is the disease of which nations die," 
said William Penn, and it is as true now as ever. 

Tandem fit surculus Arbor, " The sprout at length be- 
comes a tree!" was the motto of our Territory. " Cir- 
cumspice /" the triumphant motto of the State. What eye 
less than that of Omniscience itself could have foreseen 
the various intermingled and oftentimes conflicting forces 
of which our highly favored commonwealth is the ulti- 
mate resultant ! 

1 The greatest engine of moral power known to human aflairs, is an organ- 
ized and prosperous State. All that man in his individual capacity can do- 
all that he can effect by his private fraternities, by his ingenious discover- 
ies and wonders of art, or by his influence over others is as nothing com- 
pared with the collective perpetuated influence on human aflairs and humaa 
happiness of a well constituted, powerful commonwealth.— £'d«arc{ Everett. 



12 

As the true unity of history is to be found in Christ, 
so its true secret is, that God is in it. If ever the hu- 
man race gets out of the wilderness, and into the land 
of promise, and so fulfills the high destiny that has always 
been expected of it, it will be as ancient Israel did, — 
under the same auspices, under the same leader. Not 
" Teucro auspice, Teucro ducc" but ^^Deo auspice, Deo duce." 

But there is one question more in the history of this 
noble commonwealth in which we, my friends and fellow 
citizens, of all others who observe this day of high thanks 
and grateful review, have our own peculiar satisfaction. 
Where will be the permanent seat of government? The 
Governor and his cabinet connot wander at large over 
the whole State, like some old Teutonic king. There must 
be a capital. It is the question of the county seat all 
over again, only on a much larger scale, — the contest all 
the more severe in proportion to the greater magnitude 
of interests. The capital will be a city of its own kind. 
It must of necessity have certain advantages that will 
pertain to no other. The larger the State, the more im- 
portant the seat of government. The more the State 
increases, the more the capital city will increase. Its 
citizens may go to other cities, but other cities must come 
to it. 

Other cities may be the center of business and com- 
mercial life, but it will be the centre of State life, of 
State politics, of State society, and even in no small de- 
gree of State literature. There the Capitol, the great 
house and home of the State, will be reared; there will 
come the Senators and Kepresentatives of the people ; there 
the Governor and the various heads of department ; there 
the Judges of the Supreme Court, and the ablest mem- 
bers of the State bar; there will be the Great Library; 
there will naturally center the various State societies; 
there railroads will center and manufactures, and public 
and private institutions; there many a patriotic citizen, 
in the decline of life, attracted by its social advantages, 



13 

will come and build his house, and choose his permanent 
home. A single walk through the Capitol, and an inspec- 
tion of its 200 rooms, with the name and object over 
them for which they are designed, will be a political edu- 
cation to the citizen, of the grandeur of the Common- 
wealth, such as he will get no where else. It must be a 
large business that requires so large an office. Even the 
very building of the Capitol, and the temporary residence 
of so many workmen, will be no little local advantage in 
the employment of labor and the price of land. To 
whom shall the much coveted prize eventually be assigned? 

The first capital was at Detroit ; where shall the next 
and permanent one be? 

History does not help us much at this point, not even 
the veracious "Annals of our city from the foundation 
thereof down to the present time, by M. Dash, 1870." 
There is an hiatus valde dcjiendus which, after the filling 
up of a few more illustrious graves, may one day be also 
filled. 

For the present we shall take it for granted that our 
Conscript Fathers, who in former times were accustomed 
to assemble in the city of the Straits, in this particular 
instance, presaging, like old Tarquin, the future magni- 
tude of the State, did not build any wiser than they 
knew; that the number of rival claimants was not so 
multitudinous, as is some times insinuated ; that the con- 
flict was not quite so fierce as that of the Greeks and 
Trojans over the dead body of Patroclus, nor so long con- 
tinued and exterminating as that of the famous mousers of 
Kilkenny ; that the log-rolling on the part of the third house 
was not so effective as it might have been ; that there was 
no bribery, no corruption, no treason ; that they were all 
"honorable men," and that the Curtius-like leap into the 
middle of the table, and the still more famous toast, 
"Here's to the goose that lost the Capitol," and the con- 
cluding doxology and benediction is all a myth. 

All we care to know is that out of 70 counties, and 16 



14 

townships, and as many school sections, there was one 
Ingham, one Lansing, one school section No. 16, " one 
mile from Burchard's mill !" It was indeed a wilderness 
here w^hen that saw mill was built (1843), when the near- 
est neighbors were a mile and a half from each other on 
the north and west, and nearly five miles on the south and 
east, when "the first school was kept in a little shanty" 
(1847), and when the same year, March 16, 1847, the 
shortest act ever passed by the Legislature read on this 
wise : 

^'Resolved, That the seat of government in this State 
shall be in the township of Lansing, in the county of 
Ingham." 

The old Capitol was first occupied by the Legislature 
in 1848. 

January 4th, 1871, the message of Gov. Baldwin called 
the attention of the Legislature to the necessity for a 
new one. 

March 31st, 1871, an act was passed providing for its 
erection, and appointing the Board of State Building 
Commissioners. 

October 2d, 1873, came the greatest of all days in the 
history of the city of Lansing, the laying of the new cor- 
ner stone ! Precisely what day it was considered finished 
I do not know ; probably the day it was accepted by the 
commissioners, Monday, September 23d, 1878. 

It is no small thing to have planned and erected so 
magnificent a structure, 

"Whose sky-like dome 
Hath typified by work of daring art, 
The true design and aim " 

of such a State. 

Long days and weary nights have witnessed the study 
of the Commissioners, the invention of the Architect, the 
energy of the contractor, the skill and industry of the 
various workers in stone and wood and iron. 

So quietly and steadily has it grown up before our 



15 

eyes, that more than once have we been reminded of the 
old temple on Mt. Zion. 

"No workman steel, no ponderous axes rung, 
Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung." 

If it be true, that the architectural history of any peo- 
ple becomes a history of their condition at different periods, 
if every edifice raised by man "contains a record quite 
legible to the educated eye of the race that produced it, 
the ways of life, and even the religion of the people by 
whom it was erected;" certainly there is nothing in the 
erection of the Capitol of Michigan of which our people 
need to be ashamed. 

Those who visit the great temple of our Union at 
Washington, while they admit that its exterior is most 
imposing and even magnificent, are yet obliged to confess 
that "the impression of the whole structure is that of 
enormous and frightfully foolish waste of money, directed 
neither by patriotism, good sense, or good taste." In 
fact, "that the Capitol of the United States is a huge, 
imposing, rich, and ill-digested job." Severe strictures 
have recently been made on the capitols at Albany, Spring- 
field, and even at Hartford, as if every public building 
must not only be erected at the public expense, but at 
the loss of State or National honor. 

Thanks to those who have had the constant supervi- 
sion of this work, it seems to give our recent and most 
graceful historian no little pleasure in saying "that our 
Capitol, just completed, is a beautiful and satisfactory 
building, in which no unsound material has been placed, 
and into which all the funds appropriated have honestly 
entered. When other communities have been so badly 
cheated in such enterprises, it is certainly worth record- 
ing that Michigan has been served with strict integrity."^ 

Our "Palladian" style of architecture may not leave 
much room for " ornamented construction," but certainly 
it is free from the charge of "constructed ornament."^ 

1 Judge J. V. Campbell, p. 575. 

2 Appendix B. 



16 

While the Capitol has thus been making progress to 
its final completion, some of us, by a very natural asso- 
ciation of ideas have been led to think of its great pro- 
totype, and of the many incidents that simply by the 
alteration of a word, or by changing a shade or two of 
thought' might be made subservient to a much higher 
wisdom. 

There was the commanding hill where, in breaking 
ground for their great national temple, the Eomans found 
the head of one Tolius (Caput Tolii), " sound and entire " 
and bleeding afresh, and hence Capitol (that is, I suppose, 
the place of brains). There was the lofty flight of one hun- 
dred steps by which the ascent was made from the city 
to the temple. There, deep and broad, they laid the en- 
during foundations for those massive walls, the very centre 
of her strength, and resolution, 

"Her citadel impregnable!" 

There was the temple of Jupiter Stator, the grandest 
temple in all Rome, the name and place alike suggestive 
that a state to be worthy of its name, and have fixedness, 
and stand a permanent organization, must be under the 
protection of a Higher Power. ^ 

There, sacred to the goddess of power and empire, 
were the geese, by saving whom on one occasion they 
saved themselves. 

There, like the Palladium at Athens, was the inesti- 
mably precious shield, with which the sceptre of empire 
was supposed to be coeval and inseparable. 

There was the statue of the much belied Janus, "one 
front thoughtfully regarding the past, rich with experi- 
ence, with memories, with the priceless tradition of truth 
and virtue, the other, as earnestly directed to the All 
Hail hereafter, richer still with its transcendant hopes, 
and unfulfilled prophecies." — Ch. Sumner. 

There was the place for the statues, like that of Lepi- 

• Paucis mutatis verbis atiiue sententiis Cliristiani flerent."— Aug. De. Ver. 
Rel., IV. 
2 Quern Statorem luijus urbis atque imperii vere nominavimus."— Cicero. 



17 

dus, who had saved the Hfe of a citizen in battle, and 
for others who had achieved other golden deeds of self- 
devotion, that to this day touch the heartstrings when 
we read them. As with Nelson it was victory or West- 
minster Abbey, so with the old Roman, it was victory cr 
the Capitol. 

There came the consuls and magistrates, when first 
entering upon their respective duties, to offer sacrifices, 
as if it was the place to make a right beginning. 

There came the grand triumphal processions of Jj^milius 
and other consuls and their victorious legions, as if this 
were the only place where honors and ovations could 
rightly end. 

There, too, might be seen the great Cornelius Scipio, 
the foremost man of all Eome, who, whenever he under- 
took any affair of weighty importance, " was always accus- 
tomed to spend some hours alone in the Temple of Ju- 
piter." 

There, too, it was that Scylla, the consul, saying that 
he wanted only this to complete his happiness, turned his 
dying eyes, regretting that it would fall to the lot of 
Catullus, and not himself, to dedicate it with all the 
pomp and glory he intended. 

And there, too, in close and most significant proximity, 
was the Tarpeian Rock, from which as gallant a defender 
of the capitol at one time as Manlius was hurled by pub- 
lic wrath at another ! 

The high places of power are like the tops of the 
pyramids, the reptile can crawl there as well as the eagle 
fly; but the moment the eagle loses his wings and be- 
comes a reptile, he falls like Lucifer, to rise no more. 

And one thing more let us not forget ; there was the 
straw thatched cabin of Romulus, a good precedent for 
the preservation of our cradle of liberty, the old State 
House. 

Just about the time the loveliness and grandeur of 
the dome received their full development, and the dear 
3 



18 

old flag waved so triumphantly from the highest point 
of the lantern, it so happened that he who stands this 
day as the teacher of the hour, had a waking vision of 
the capitol and its surroundings, which has been to him 
a theme and inspiration ever since. It was early morn- 
ing, — after a long night of watching with a dying friend. 
It was just at sunrise, when, as it sometimes happens 
in midsummer, the sun comes up without a cloud and 
the horizon is clear of mist. The first object that ar- 
rested my attention was the lofty old elm on the park— 
"one where a thousand stood," that seemed strangely 
thrown into the back-ground — like a sentinel that has 
been doing double duty through the night, and is just 
relieved. I thought of the Eed man, and the hunter 
and trapper, and the hardy pioneer, but the tear was 
scarcely started ere it was caught by a smile, — when I 
looked upon our pleasant city bursting like a flower from 
the shadows of the wilderness ! There is nothing to 
regret when barbarism gives place to civilization ! 

The next thing I noticed was the modest little dome 
of the old Capitol, cheerful and bright and all ablaze with 
glory. That, too, had been relieved from duty, but there 
was nothing to regret in this respect, nothing of which to 
be ashamed ; very much in its history of which to be 
justly proud. And if in the course of human events the 
time had come, as Will Carleton has it, to go 

"Out of the old house into the new," 

it was more as a father gives way in his declining years 
to the advancing honors of a worthy son, that the old 
Capitol at that moment seemed to be looking at the new — 
nothing of jealousy, nothing of envy, nothing but grate- 
ful joy. 

Once more I looked, and behold the new Capitol was 
illumined from without, brighter than it has ever yet been 
lighted from within. It was like a revelation, and in one 
happy moment I seemed to read the history of the entire 



19 

past, and involuntarily I exclaimed, "What hath God 
Wrought ?" 

I was in a genial mood for a kind of reflection which 
to a large extent has so pleasantly replaced the day dreams 
of youth. As the star of hope sets that of memory rises. 

I thought of Washington when he first laid out, from 
the wilderness not yet subdued, the site of our now mag- 
nificent metropolis, — especially of that memorable proces- 
sion, September, 1793, when, with fife and drum, and on 
a fallen tree across the Tiber, and up the narrow foot- 
way, amid the oaks and underbrush, he came to lay the 
corner stone of such a capitol as the world had never 
seen. 

I thought of the mighty contrast between the old Capitol 
and the new, never so well put as in the burning words of 
the illustrious exile of Hungary, God bless him ! when like 
Cyneas, the Epirote among the Senators of Rome, he stood 
before our Senators and Representatives, more to his honor 
than to theirs, to plead for liberty and to plead in vain ! 
He left more liberty than he found: "I stand before you 
Legislators of the new capitol — that glorious hall of your 
people's collective majesty. The capitol of old yet stands, 
but the spirit has departed from it, and come over to 
yours, purified by the air of liberty. The old stands a 
mournful monument of the fragility of human things — 
yours as a sanctuary of eternal rights. The old beamed 
with the red lustre of conquest, now darkened by oppres- 
sion's gloomy night — yours beams with freedom's bright- 
est ray. The old absorbed the world by its own cen- 
trahzed glory; yours protects your own nation against 
absorption even by itself. The old was awful with irre- 
stricted power; yours is glorious with having restricted 
it. At the view of the old, nations trembled; at the 
view of yours, humanity hopes. To the old, misfortune 
was only introduced with fettered hands, to kneel at the 
triumphant conqueror's heels; to yours, the triumph of 
introduction is granted to unfortunate exiles, invited to 



20 

the honor of a seat. And where kings and Csesars never 
would be hailed for their power, might, and wealth, there 
the persecuted chief of a down-trodden nation is wel- 
comed as your great republic's guest, precisely because 
he is persecuted, helpless, and poor. In the old, the 
terrible Vce Victis was the rule ; in yours protection to the 
oppressed, malediction to ambitious oppressors, and con- 
solation to the vanquished in a just cause. And while 
out of the old a conquered world was ruled, you in yours 
provide for the common confederative interests of a ter- 
ritory larger than the conquered world of the old. There 
sat men boasting their will to be sovereign of the world ; 
here sit men whose glory is to acknowledge the laws of 
Nature and of Nature's God, and to do that which their 
sovereign, the people, wills. ^ 

Again the vision changed ! I thought with no little 
anxiety of those who would enter our virgin Capitol, 
whether they would be intelligent lovers of liberty, civil, 
religious, and Christian? Men like Kossuth, the very 
breath of whose life was patriotism; or men like Jeff 
Davis and other wandering stars that have shot madly 
from their sphere, and gone out in the blackness of eternal 
infamy ! All the policy, special pleading heretofore or 
hereafter can never deceive the people of the North and 
dignify the late Eebellion into a civil war. It was Re- 
bellion, that, and nothing else.'* 

I thought whether these men, of whatever party, would 
be STATESMEN, i. 6., men of the State who would legislate 
for its honor, its credit, and the puUlc good, or whether 
they would be demagogues, "lewd fellows of the baser 
sort," who would simply carry out their own selhsh aims 
and that of their more immediate constituents, like the 
office-seekers in the time of Aristophanes, so justly com- 
pared by him to the fishermen of Lake Copais, who stirred 
up the mud, because the dirtier the water the surer they 
were to catch their eels ! 

I Life of Kossuth by Headley, p. 453. 

» That I speak what I do know, see Appendix A. 



21 

Greater questions will demand attention in the new 
Capitol than ever were discussed in the old. The red 
spectre of the barricades in 1871 will not so easily down ! 
** As in ancient Athens, the cave of the furies was under- 
neath the rock on whose top sat the court of the Areo- 
pagus." So is it now. " The communism of our day is 
a real cave of the furies," and the furies are "not asleep 
in their cave."' The legislation now called for touches 
the very foundations of society itself. The slow matches 
that even now are burning must be stamped out, the in- 
sidious enemy be countermined, and that speedily. 

I thought of the corner-stone of the new Capitol, than 
which there is nothing in the whole building that pleases 
me better. It faces north ; it looks east ! It contains 
a copy of the Holy Bible — equally the foundation of Eng- 
land's greatness and our own ! (I am even pleased with 
its ecclesiastical position. About midway between Congre- 
gationalism and Episcopacy — is pretty good Presbyterian- 
ism) ! 

Once more I thought of the grand oration of Webster 
on the extension of our National Capitol, at the laying 
of its corner-stone, and the still grander prayer depos- 
ited within, and adopted its petitions as my own. 

More than all I thought of the ever-memorable scene, 
it was my good fortune to witness in reference to that 
same Capitol in July, 1864, — the very midnight of the 
slave-holder's rebellion, — traitors multiplying at the north 
as fast as the rebels were subdued at the south, the 
rebel the better man of the two. 

As I approached the Capitol, as if in sympathy with 
the signs of the times, it was shrouded in the deepest 
gloom, so that it was scarcely visible even from the very 
gates. Presently there w^as a rift in the shifting shad- 
ows, and I caught sight for the first time of the new 
dome — in all its towering height, its immense proportions, 
its sublime magnificence. As I peered curiously through 

> See Prof. R. D. Hitchcock's "Socialism,"— passiw?,— A. D. F. Rantlolph, 
New York, 1878. 



22 

the mist, it seemed as if I saw a gigantic figure at the 
top — stationary — and various smaller figures moving around 
it. And so I did. As if in utter defiance of rebellion 
and laughing treason to scorn, and daring their united 
power to do its worst, the mighty symbol of our national 
authority was steadily advancing to its completion. Not 
the purchase of the land on which the Carthaginians 
were encamped, by that plucky old Eoman who paid the 
full price, could have had a more inspiriting effect on 
beleaguered Eome than the sight of our national dome, 
on that most humiliating day in all my life as an Amer- 
ican citizen, had on me in beleaguered Washington ! Then 
as never before I felt that my first loyalty was to that 
DOME — rather than that of Michigan, Pennsylvania, or any 
other State — to that dome in the mighty shadow of which 
all other domes could safely' rest ; to that dome as the 
very keystone that held the national arch together, and 
which once removed would prostrate our great political 
edifice in utter ruin.' Yes ! it was worth all the blood 
it cost to save it, and I said in my heart of hearts that 
day what I now say as my final word to each of you, 
my fellow citizens : 

Never, never, never ! let us despair of the Eepublic ! 

" This land we from our fathers had in trust, 
And to our children will transmit or die." 
This is our maxim, this our piety, 
And God and Nature say that it is just. 



'"One nation historically born — one political organization having one com- 
mon life— each part with its aclcnowledged local rights, but holding as the 
most snored of all 'State Rights,' the riglit of each part in every other part, 
and IN THE WHOLE. 'STATE RIGHTS.'"— A photograph fi'om the ruins of 
ancient Greece, by Prof. Taylor Lewis. Albany, 1865. 



appe:n^dix a. 



So persistent and disingenuous of late have been the attempts to 
ignore and falsify history, that I venture to reproduce some of my 
own personal testimony in the form of an extract from a letter, dated 
Gettysburg, Penn., and pubUshed in the Detroit Advertiser & Trib- 
une, July. 1863: 

"I want you thoroughly to understand us," said one of the reb- 
els in the barn to whom I rendered the most assistance, "what we 
at the South mean, and what we are trying to do. With the excep- 
tion of tliat third man from the door, who is a Union man and be- 
lieves in the reconstruction of tlae Union " (with a derisive laugh), 
"none of us believe in a republican form of government." "What 
do you beheve in then?" I asked. " We are in favor of a monar- 
chical form of government, and that is what we are trying to estab- 
lish." "That is, in an empire under Maximihan, with England and 
France to intervene, I suppose." "Yes, and we are certain to have 
it!" "Well, gentlemen," said I, "in reply to this declaration, to 
which your common silence seems to give a full assent, permit me 
to say with my Union friend here, that I do believe m a repubhcan 
form of government, and what is more, we mean to keep the gov- 
ernment that was handed down to us from our fathers. Last night 
the news came in by a sure hand that Vicksburg is taken and the 
Mississippi is ours. Your government has gone up! Gentlemen, good 
night!" 

Why cannot we at the North understand the South as well as 
they understand us? From the very first I have had an undoubting 
beUef that a solid South would make a solid North, and it is 
coming fast! Here and there I have heard of a reconstructed rebel, 
but I have never yet seen one, even in a southern Presbyterian 
minister! Hereafter rebels and traitors will be treated more as they 
deserve, when there will be no England or France to help them. 



APPENDIX B. 



For the following interesting items I am indebted to the unique 
and invaluable "scrap books" of O. A. Jenison, Esq., — a monument 
of untiring industry and indomitable perseverance that must be seen 
to be appreciated. In the judgment of all who have examined these 
volumes, the library of the Capitol can never be complete without 
the Capitol's oum Diary : 

Advertisements for designs, etc., April 12, 1871. 

Advertisements for proposals, May 23, '72. 

Contract awtirded to N. Osborn & Co., July 15, '72. 

Ground broken, July 26, '72. 

First load of brick, August 12, '72. 

First concrete, May 5, '73. 

First footing stones, June 24, '73, 11 A. M. 

CoKNEB STONE laid, Oct. 2, '73. 

First stone for the base corner, Oct. 9, '73. 

First doorsill, south basement door, April 14, '74. 

Contents of corner stone sealed. May 29, '74. 

Keystone to front pedunent, the top stone of the building, placed 
in position, Oct. 8, '76. 

The central figure representing Michigan, placed Oct. 4, '76, at 
4:30 p. M. 

Foundation stone laid for dome, April 22, '74. 

First grand rib of dome placed in position, Aug. 13, '77. 

Iron framework for lantern finished June 13, '78. 

Last scaffolding removed from the dome, July, 1878. 

Ground broken for east portico, June 27, '77. 

Ground broken for boiler-room, south end, Sept. 26, '77. 

Boiler placed, Oct. 30, '77. 

Commenced plastering, April 10, '77. 

Commenced laying marble in corridors, March 11, '78. 

Last stone in the east walk laid, Oct. 4, '78. 

Lighted up for the first time, November 8, '78. 

DIMENSIONS. 

Length of building, 345 feet 2 inches; depth, 195 feet 5 inches; 
heighth of lantern, 265 feet; diameter of rotunda, 44J feet, height 
150 feet; first foundation stone, length 6 feet, breadth, 3 feet 8 
inches, thickness 1 foot 3 inches; platform stones of front portico, 



25 

15 feet long, 6 feet wide, 18 inches thicli, and weigh about 10 tons 
each; main approach to building, 30 feet wide. 

MATERIALS. 

Foundation walls, Lamont limestone from Joliet, IlUnois. The 
face stones are sandstone from Amherst, Ohio. Corner stone of 
New Hampshire granite. Entrance doors to first floor, 14 feet 6 
inches high, 3 feet 1 inch wide, made of black walnut. The stairs 
are of iron; the corridors paved with marble and slate. The floor 
of the rotunda is of hammered glass, one inch thick; the main ap- 
proach to the building of Ohio blue stone. 

EOOMS. 

The building contains 216 rooms proper, 54 corridors, stairways 
and alcoves, and 2 boiler rooms, making, exclusive of 4 stairways 
and dome, a total of 268 rooms. 



to the day the corner stone was laid $136,320.72. Entire cost of 
construction, furniture, and arranging grounds, about $1,500,000. 

The building stands on Capitol square, known on the original 
plat as block 249, and which contains eleven acres of land. 



Chaeles M. Ceoswell, . . Governor. 

Elijah E. Meyees, . . . Architect. 

Oliver Marble, . . . Local Superintendent. 

N. OsBUEN <fc Co., . . . Contractors. 



finis coronat opus. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




016 090 989 4 # 



